T-shirt fundraiser

Hello, We are doing a tshirt fundrasier to help support our adoption and to raise adoption awareness. If you are interested, follow this link and do some shopping. Blessings. www.adoptionbug.com/joslynsadopt

We are making progress. Our home study update has been sent to the DRC. Our representative in DRC has been to court to request a birth certificate. They need a birth certificate to apply for the initial court hearing. They are baby steps, but we are moving in the right direction.

Here we go again!!!

Well, this blog has been neglected for a while now. We just wanted to announce that we have started the adoption process again. We are adopting a little girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo. We aren't sure how old she is, but she is somewhere in the 3-5 range. We are going to call her Jaylie. We are hoping to have her home before Christmas. Not much is known about Jaylie's life. She was found abandoned about 19 months ago. Please pray for the ever changing intercountry adoption process to go smoothly and quickly, and for Jaylie to be well care for until we can bring her home.

Today was the day :o)

Well, today was the day it finally happened. Dru has been a little reserved with me as far as giving affection or spontaneous hugs or kisses. In the last week he has started feeling more comfortable with me and now will lean on me when we are talking, or hold my hand for no reason. Well, today he just walked up to me and said out of the blue "I lub you mama." Those are some of the nicest words I have ever heard.

Dru and I have started kindergarten 2 days a week. Dru loves it. He thought that he needed to wear a uniform to school like they do in Ethiopia,so he wore the same orange shirt everytime we went for the first 3 weeks. He broke out of his shell yesterday and wore a red shirt with an orange shirt underneath. The kids at school are all so funny. We have him at a country school and there are only 41 kids total in grades k-6. They are just letting Dru think that he is the king. They let him run touchdowns to the end zone. In PE nobody gets mad when he tackle them instead of just taging them. They better stop letting him get away with stuff or he is going to turn into a monster.

Dru is really starting to pick up some English. All of the kids at school don't think so though. Dru and I were in the mud room at school with a little boy named Tristan. Dru kept trying to hand me a paper and I wasn't really paying attention. Finally Dru yelled "Mama, This!!!" and I took the paper from him. Tristan looked at me and asked, "What does mamathis mean?" I had to try really hard not to laugh at him.

Lots of firsts

Dru throwing snowballs for Scout to catch

Dru's first snow.

Dru's first bike ride.

First ice cream

When you come from a place where nothing is cold, ice cream can be shocking.

Working on my bike

Dru wants to make sure his bike is in tip top condition.

He is home!!!

Hello all,
We have been home with our son Dru for almost a week. Sorry I didn't post sooner, but it has been a little crazy around here. Our trip started off a little crazy. We were just in time to get delayed by the big storm in Washington DC. We were supposed to fly from Gillette to Denver, then Denver to Washington DC, the DC to Ethiopia. Instead, we flew from Gillette to Denver, then Denver to Dayton Ohio. Of course the flight from Dayton to DC was cancelled, so we spent the night in Ohio. who knew? We were then supposed to fly out of Dayton on Thursday morning, but again the flight was cancelled. Which gave us the opportunity to check out the National Airforce Museum. Usually I hate museums, but this one was pretty cool. we finally got out of Dayton and into DC onThursday evening. We left for Ethiopia on Friday morning and arrived there Saturday morning, one day late. Because we were late, we didn't get to meet Dru's birth father. We also didn't get to see Dru until Monday because there are no visitors allowed at the orphanage on weekends. We did get to go to the Ethiopian National museum. It was good to see some of the history of the country, but 2 museums in 3 days was a little much for me. We also got to go see an amazing program. It is called Yezulalem Minch, which means eternal spring. We went to their Saturday feeding program. I think that there were about 70 children there that day. For some of the kids that was the only meal that they would get for the week. they were each given a large bowl of soup, a banana and a large piece of bread. Some of the kids were as young as two. They had to walk up a rocky hill to sit in the shade. Not one child spilled a drop, and they all ate everything. It was amazing. Monday was the longest day ever. We knew that was the day we would get to pick Dru up. It misted seemed like everything went so slow. We went to lunch, then went to another orphanage to pick up some of the other kiddos from our group. We finally went to Dru's orphanage at about 3:30. They had a very nice farewell ceremony for him and the other children who were leaving. I couldn't seem to stop crying. It was so nice to finally have him with us. He did very well the first night he was with us. We just put him in his bed, he pulled the covers up over his head and we could hear him praying. When I pulled the covers down about 2 minutes later, he was asleep. Tuesday we had our embassy appointment to get Dru's visa. The bus was supposed to pick us up and take us to lunch, then to the embassy. Well, the African Leaders Summit was in town, so they closed a bunch of roads. The bus couldn't get to us. We ended up take g a share taxi to the restaurant. That was an interesting experience. We finally made it to the Embassy and Dru's immigration visa was approved. YAY!!!!! It takes the Embassy 2 days to process the Visa, then the agency picks it up and gives it to us. Well, when we were handed Dru's visa on Thursday, it had someone else's picture on it. YIKES!! Our agency had to take it back to the embassy for correction at 1:00. We were leaving for the airport at 6:45. That was a tense few hours, but it all worked out. We arrive back in Washington DC on Friday morning. Dru became an American citizen at 8:10am on Friday, February 5th when our plane touched down. What a Blessing.
..

So close

Hello,
We have had an emotional few days. On Thursday we got a call from our adoption agency. They wanted to let us know that we could possibly be going to get our new son. We would have had to leave on Friday morning. Well, we got all packed and ready to go. Friday morning we got a call that we weren't going to be able to go. We went from happy and nervous, to sad and grumpy. We are trying to stay positive and we are hopeful that we will get to leave on January 27th for an Embassy appointment on February 1st. I can't think about waiting any longer than that. We are just taking it one day at a time.

We are still looking for a middle name that starts with R. Let us know if you have any suggestions.

Good news!!!

Well, we now have a birth certificate for our little guy with Duane and I listed as parents. We also got his passport. There must be some special process for taking passport photos that make you look weird. Our case has been submitted US embassy in Ethiopia, so we are just waiting to get an appointment to pick up his Visa. We will have an appointment on January 18th, February 1st, February 15th, or March 1st. We may have a few weeks notice, or just a day or two of notice. They told me that we should just get packed and stay ready to go.

Thanks to all who have been praying for us. It seems to be working, so keep it up:o)

Waiting some more

Well, we got some news about our embassy appointment, and it wasn't good. The US Embassy in Ethiopia has slowed down the process of getting Visas for adopted children. We have a conference call with our agency tomorrow and are hoping to get some better news. We were hopeful that we would get an Embassy date in January, but that seems really inlikely at this point. Please pray that we get good news tomorrow!!!!

Still waiting

Hello all,
We are still just waiting. We haven't heard anything new, just waiting. I was hoping that we would hear that we had a birth certificate before Christmas, but it doesn't look like that will happen. We will just keep patiently waiting.
Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

"He is yours"

"He is yours," is what the judge said to us on Wednesday, December 8th, 2010. I guess it is official, we are a family of five. We will have to go back in a few weeks to pick him up. It was super hard to have to leave him there. We are hoping that the wait won't be too long. The US Embassy in Ethiopia has started doing some investigations of some of the adoptions. They are trying to make sure that all of the adoptions are being done ethically, so it is a good thing. I just hope it doesn't hold up the process for us. Now that we have met our little guy, the waiting is even harder.

We leave in just a few days. I doesn't really seem real yet. By this time next week we will have met our new son. We will also get to meet lots of other little ones at the orphanage. I'm sure it will be overwhelming, and exciting and something that we will never forget.

Please pray for us to have safe travel.
Thanks!!!

Almost time

We get to meet our new son two weeks from today!!!!!! We can't wait!

A Prayer for Children

This was posted on our adoption agency's blog. I love it, even though it makes me cry.


A Prayer For Children

We pray for children who put chocolate fingers everywhere, who like to be tickled,
who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, who sneak Popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in their math workbooks, who can never find their shoes.

And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed
wire, who can’t bound in the street in a new pair of sneakers, who
never go to the circus, who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who
sleep with the dog and bury the goldfish, who hug in a hurry and forget their lunch
money, who cover themselves with Band-Aids and sing off-key, who squeeze
toothpaste all over the sink, who slurp their soup.

And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe
blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die,
who can’t find any bread to steal, who don’t have any rooms to clean,
whose pictures are not on anybody’s dresser, whose monsters are real.

We pray for children who spend their allowances before Tuesday, who throw
tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who
shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse the tub, who get visits from the
tooth fairy, who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in
church and scream in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at, and whose
smiles can make us cry.

We pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat
anything, who aren’t spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry
themselves to sleep, and who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for the children who want to be carried and for those who must,
for those who we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance.
For those we smother … and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind
enough to offer it.
Ina J. Hughes

Update

We got an update on Monday November 1st!!! We got 12 pictures of our little guy. He is smiling and playing in all of them. He is growing and learning. They have started teaching him English letters. We can't wait to meet him!!!

A while back, while I was being impatient, I figured out that if I had gotten pregnant the day we filled out our premliminary application for adoption that my due date would be November 1st. Well, that is tomorrow. I knew that I shouldn't expect to adopt a child faster than I could grow one, so that helped me with the waiting. I guess I need to find another little mind game to play with myself to get me through the next couple months:o) We are very excited to meet "B" in a little over a month.

We are hoping to get an update from our agency soon. We haven't received any pictures or news about our little guy since the referral. It has been over 10 weeks, so we are getting really anxious. Hopefully we will hear something soon.

Our Court Trip

Hello,
We have all of the travel plans made for our court trip. It was significantly cheaper to leave a few days earlier, so we are going to take a long layover in London on our way to Addis. How much do you think we can do in London in 36 hours?

We haven't received an update on our little guy yet. I am very anxious to get some more information on him and to get a few more pictures of his cute little face. My Grandma passed away yesterday. I am sad that he won't be able to know her.

Court Date

Hello all,
We have great news. We found out our court date. We will need to be in Ethiopia on December 8th to officially adopt our new little guy. We are so excited!! Thanks for all of the prayers.

Submitted to Court

Yay!! Good news today. All of the necessary documents have been gathered in Ethiopia and submitted to court. That means that we should hear when our court date is scheduled for in 2-4 weeks. Hopefully it will be a little shorter wait than that:o)

Also, Ali and I completed the Bethany 5k this afternoon. Ty volunteered to help with registrations for the race. Beau, Camden, Derrick, Shelby, Andrea, Julia and coach Bayles all can in support of Ali. It was 90 degrees, so the walk was a little warm, but still better than snow!!

One Month

Well,
It has been one month today since we received our referral for our new little guy. It is hard to wait while he is getting older without us. In some ways the waiting is harder than before we got the referral because now we know who we are waiting for:o) At the same time it is a little easier for the same reason. We are preparing for a little boy, who is bound to miss his Ethiopian family when he gets here. We have spent time preparing his bedroom, buying a booster seat and staring at things in the stores. We are trying to imagine what it would be like for us if someone came into our world and scooped us up, then took us to a place where nobody looked like us, talked like us, ate the food that we were use to, sometime it snows, and everything else we were accustomed to was different. We will try to remember how scary that would be during the first few weeks we have him home.

Waiting impatiently,
Sherry

Waiting for our Court Date

Hello Everyone,
It sounds like it takes 4 or 5 weeks to find out when our court date will be scheduled, so it is back to waiting again. The waiting seems a little easier right now. I think it's because we know who we are waiting for now. I can't seem to stop looking at our little guys picture. For some reason he seems to get a little cuter every time I look at his picture:o)

I did hear that our acceptance paperwork was all sent to Ethiopia last Thursday, so as long as we are making progress, I am happy.

God Bless

Vitamins

Duane and I will travel to Africa sometime in the next 3 months for our court date and to meet our little guy in person. Then we will go back about a month later to pick him up and bring him home for good. We will be taking Ty and Ali on the 2nd trip. We have to wait for his immigration papers to go through after the court date, so that is why we have to make 2 trips. When we started this process it was only required for us to go the Africa once, but since we have been in process the rule changed and we have to go twice, so if anyone is looking for Christmas ideas for Ty and Ali, airline tickets would be great:o) If anybody has any spare prayer time, please pray that we can get him home by Christmas.

We are so excited and happy that this little guy is joining our family. Several people have asked if there is anything that they can do to help or if there is anything that we need. When we go over they ask that we bring a donation for the orphanage. I would like to take as many childrens chewable vitamins as I can fit in a suit case, so if anyone would like to contribute a bottle or two to the orphanage let me know and I will get them over there. There are about 75 kids in the orphanage with our little guy, so I hope to collect about 30 bottles so they have a months worth.

We also got an update today that said on our first trip, we can't take anything specifically to our child. We will meet our child in a group setting, and he won't specifically be told that we are his new parents. It sounds like it has been hard for some of the kids when they are introduced to their new parents, then their parents have to leave them in the orphanage for a month while they wait for the immigration stuff to go through. It has to be really hard for those little guys to understand. It will be hard for us to, but at least we can understand the process.

Thanks to you all for all of the support and prayer. We just feel so blessed and excited about this whole adventure.

Exciting news

Sorry I didn't post sooner, but I have been busy working on adoption paperwork because on Friday, August 20th, we got a referral!!!!! It's a boy. I know that we have thought all along that it would be a girl, but we were wrong. We have a four year old boy joining our family. He is super cute and really needs a family. I am absolutely positive that he is the child that is meant to be in our family. The night before we got the referral I prayed for God to hurry the process up for us. I know it was a little selfish, but I know that I am not good at waiting for things, so I asked God to hurry and get the child that we were meant to have ready for us. It usually takes 4-8 months from the time a dossier goes to Ethiopia to get a referral and ours had only been there 3 weeks, so I definitely wasn't expecting a call the next morning, but that is what happened. We will be traveling for court sometime in the next 3 months. After the court date, we will be able to go back and pick him up to bring home in 3 or 4 weeks. We are very hopeful that we will have him home before Christmas. We are soooooo happy!!! Oh and another weird thing is that his birthday is the same day as Ty's.

Training

Hello All,
Duane and I attended mandatory adoption training today in Douglas. The training was really good. They wanted to make sure everybody understood the difference between parenting bio kids and parenting adopted kids. Also they talked a lot about the bonding and attaching process. They made it very clear that it wasn't like bringing a biological baby home. There are not to be any parties, or going shopping, or many visitors for the first few weeks until the child adjusts to their new setting and they know who Mom and Dad are. I hope I don't go to stir crazy during that time. I imagine we will try to keep everything really peaceful during that time.

The other issue will be sleep schedules. I believe that Ethiopian time is about 12 hours later than mountain time. It might take a while for all of our schedules to sync.

Despite the heavy topics at training today, we are still very excited. We can't wait to see what child God has picked out for us.

Ty and Ali

DTE

Hello All,
Friday was a big day. It is our official DTE, or dossier to Ethiopia day. This means that we are finally done with paperwork and getting things approved. We are "officially waiting" for a child now. The next step is to get a referral for a child. This can take anywhere from 2 weeks to a year. Yay, we are on to another phase of waiting!! Pray for the wait to be short.

Love is weird

I think it is crazy how much you can love someone you have never met. Someone you know nothing about, not even their age age or gender. Love is weird, but I do love this new little critter that I haven't met yet :o)

Due Date

Ok, I know that I am a dork. I am wondering what the adoption time frame will be in comparison to a normal pregnancy. If I would have gotten pregnant at the time we filled out our preliminary application for adoption my due date would be November 1st. I guess I better be patient until at least that time. We shouldn't expect to adpot a baby faster than it takes to grow one. :o)

We did find out that the courts in Ethiopa will be closed from August 6th until September 27th. The Ethiopian courts close for about 2 months every year. What that means for us is we can still receive a referral during that time, but won't make our first trip until after the courts re-open. Probably won't effect us much at all.

All paperwork in!!!

All of our paperwork made it to the national office in Grand Rapids, and was forwarded to Washington DC early this week. As soon as the paperwork is authenticated (I'm still not sure what that means) they will send our dossier to Ethiopia and we will on the list for a referral. The referral can happen quickly, or take several months. Of course we hope for quickly, but are not planning on it. What a relief to finally be at this point in the process.

1 paper left

Hello All,
Well, I found out today that we are down to waiting for one more paper to come in with a state seal. Almost there:o) Hopefully not too much more waiting.

Hello All,

I just found out that I am kind of a bone head. I was sooooo excited to get all of my paperwork done and turned in. Well, I just found out that the new birth certificates and marriage certificate that I had to order to be turned in with the dossier came with a state seal on them, but they were still supposed to be sent in to the state to get another state seal stapled to them. Well, the local Bethany office didn't catch it, so they sent everything to the national office. Now the national office is sending them back to us to get the other state seal. It will put us about two weeks behind where I hoped to be. I guess that this has been the only glitch so far, so I should just be thankful.

What do I do now?

Getting all of our paperwork turned in was soooo exciting, but what do I do now? When we were doing all of the paperwork, I was at least sort of in control of that timeline. I could decorate the new bedroom, but I don't know if we will have an infant, toddler or a four year old. I guess I'd better just find a new hobby:o)

Blessing

I can't seem to keep myself from wondering why our paperwork process has gone so smoothly. So many people going through this process seem to have hold up after hold up during the dossier preparation phase of the adoption. We haven't have any major hold ups or problems. We are about 2 months ahead of schedule with our dossier completion. I have decided to just take it for the blessing that it is, and hope that things continue to go smoothly. I think that that will be easier than waiting to see what goes wrong:o). Thanks so much to all of you who have been praying for us and our future child. It must be working. I am definitely feeling closer to God than I ever have before. Thanks to everyone for your support.

It's a good day!!!!

Hello all,

We got our approval from the USCIS Department of Homeland Security today. That means that the government has officially approved us for international adoption. This is the last piece of paperwork we needed for our dossier to be complete. We hurried and got the form signed and notarized and down to fedex. It should be in Cheyenne Monday to get the Great State Seal, then off to our adoption agency immediately after that. These papers will be going on quite a journey. I believe after Rapid City, they go to the agency headquarters in Grand Rapids Michigan, then to Washington DC for translation, then to Addis Ababa Ethiopia. The whole process should take 3-4 weeks. Now we just wait.

Hello All,

We got some disappointing news today. There was a three year old girl in Ethiopia who was available for adoption. Our social worker asked us if we wanted to be considered for that child and of course we said yes. We knew that it was a long shot because we don't have all of our paperwork in to Ethiopia yet (still waiting for our paperwork to come back from our finger prints.) This little girl was placed with another family today. They had all of their paperwork in Ethiopia. It is hard when you are shown a picture of a child, then you have to wait several day to find out if she will be ours. Even though we are disappointed, we know that God already has our child picked out for us, and we will just have to wait until he is ready to give her to us. Also, what a fabulous day for this little girl. She went from being an orphan to having a family today. If you are the praying type, please pray for this little girls to have a smooth transition into her new family.

All fingerprinted.

Duane and I went to Rapid City yesterday and got our fingerprints taken. It should only be two or three weeks now until we send our dossier in. We need everybody to pray that we find the child that we are meant to have. Also, if you could all pray that it happens quickly, that would be great:o). It is a little selfish on my part, I know I am not good at waiting for things.

Well, we finished up all our our required travel shots last Thursday. Duane will need a couple of booster in October, but we have everything we need to travel. We head off to Rapid City in the morning for our biometric fingerprints for the US government. Baby steps :o)

This is a link to an article that I thought was kind of interesting.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/05/ethiopian_orphans_need_families.html

Health Status

Hi,

I have had a few people ask about the health status of our future child. A legitimate question considering the horrible AIDS epidemic going on in Africa right now. We are able to tell our adoption agency what kind of health problems or developmental problems we are willing to take on. We are willing to take a child with minor correctable health or developmental problems. All of the children are tested for HIV and Hepatitis before they are referred to a family. We won't take a child who is positive for either, so our agency won't refer a child to us with either of those conditions. Most of the children will suffer some problems from malnutrition. Most of those problems can be overcome with time. Some of the children may not grow as tall as they were meant to, or may be anemic. There is a chance of institutional delays and some cultural delays. For instance, in some cultures kids don't walk as early as American children because they "wear" their babies a lot of the time in slings, so the kids aren't on the floor as often to develop that skill. We are sure that God will give us the child that is suppose to be with us and we will be able to handle whatever that entails. Have a good day!!!

There is no me without you

Hello again,

Duane flew to Tulsa for work yesterday. He had plenty of time to catch up on his required adoption reading. I am reading a book called, "There is no me without you," It isn't required reading, but it is really good. I am only about half way through the book, but it is really interesting. It has some history and how there came to be some many orphans in Africa. It follows one women's story of helping orphans. If anyone is interested in reading about this subject, this is the book that I would recommend.

I got an email from our social worker yesterday. The program director in overseas resigned. Luckily they had someone else to take over for him right away. Unfortunately that means that we have to redo some of our paperwork because it has the old directors name on it. It won't be too big of deal. Every time we have to change something in our dossier that will go to Africa we have to have it notarized, then send it to the secretary of state to get the "Great State Seal," so that they know the person who notarized it is actually a notary in the state.

Hello All,

Last week, on Thursday we all went to public health for another round of shots. I got 3, Ty got 3, Ali got 2 and Duane got 5. Yikes!!! If anyone plans on traveling to Africa, be prepared to get a lot of shots. We wanted to make sure that we got everything required and recommended. We didn't have to get Yellow Fever vaccinations to go to Ethiopia, but we have heard of people not being allowed back into the US if we went to a country that had Yellow Fever. I'm sure that whenever we get back to the US we won't want to be stuck in quarantine. We also don't have to take medicine for Malaria while we are there because the capital city's elevation if too high for there to be Malaria in the mosquitoes there. There isn't a vaccination for Malaria. The way to prevent it is to take antibiotics while we are in Ethiopia. I think we will all take the antibiotics to prevent Malaria just in case. Sometimes adoptive families get to leave the city to meet their new child's birth family, so better to be safe than sorry:0) We have an appointment next Thursday for our next round of shots.

Another big thing we have been working on is getting our house ready for another kiddo. We finished (almost) the room in the basement that we have been using for storage for the last 10 years. Wow, we accumulated a lot of stuff in that amount of time. We got the room done about 2 weeks ago, with the exception of the closet organizer and Ty moved in. He seems to like it. It is bigger than the bedroom he had upstairs, and it is farther away from Mom and Dad which is always a good thing when you are 17. It kind of turned into a whole house bedroom makeover. We repainted Ali's room yellow and purple. She got new mirrored closet doors and new carpet in her room. The room that will be for our adopted child got new carpet and new paint. While Ty was in that room, it was red, white and blue. We decided to paint 2 walls white and the other 2 kind of a medium blue. I am not a fan of blue at all, but it is suppose to be the most relaxing color. I'm sure that when we bring our new child home they will be scared and won't understand what we are saying to them, so if the color blue might make them feel better, I guess I can deal with it :o)

Our Ethiopian Adoption

Well, some of you may know, and some of you may not know that Duane and I are in the process of adopting from Africa. This is how we got to where we are now. Duane and I have always talked about adopting, or doing foster care "someday." Several days after the earthquake in Haiti Duane and I were driving back to Gillette from Moorcroft when the news came on the radio. They were talking about all of the children who had lost their families in Haiti. I said, "we should adopt a child that really needs a home." Duane said, "yes we should." That was January 19, 2010 and that is the day our journey began. We discussed adoption several times over the next few days. We decided to use Bethany Christian Services as our adoption agency.

January 25, 2010 we filled out our preliminary and wait then waited to here back if we would be eligible to adopt. Waiting seems to be something that you do a lot of when you decided to adopt.

January 28, 2010 we received an email from Bethany Christian Services letting us know which countries we were eligible to adopt from. We found out that some countries have very strict rules about who can adopt their children. One of the countries we were eligible to adopt from was Ethiopia. I had already been having dreams about a little African American toddler, so that seemed like the choice we should make. I was in Washington and Oregon at this time. I was in Oregon for 5 days trying to keep my then 20 month old niece, Kathryn occupied while my brother and his wife were busy taking care of their new baby that had decided to come into the world about 8 weeks early. I spent 4 days in Washington with Duane's sisters family and their 8 year old daughter Kerrigan. I decided that if I could keep up with my nieces, I should be able to keep up with a new child of our own. I think I did ok :o)

In February we spent a lot of time talking about adoption and how it would impact our family. We talked a lot about bring a child of another race into our family and how it would affect members of our extended families and friends. We talked to people who had adopted children and adults who had been adopted as children. We spent a lot of time talking to our own children. We also had to consider how this would affect us financially. Adoption is very expensive!!

We had an incredible amount of paperwork to fill out. An incredible amount. We had to have it all filled out before we could submit our formal application. We had to ask several members of our families and friends to fill out letters of reference for us. Everyone we asked to write letter was so helpful and supporting. We had to fill out papers about our childhood, how we were raised, our relationships with our siblings, the kind of house we have, our employment histories, how much money we make, who will raise the child if Duane and I should have an untimely death, doctors statements and fingerprinting among other things.

March 3, 2010 We submitted our formal application. This is when it started to get serious. We had to send money with our application.

March 18, 2010 Duane and I had our first meeting with the social workers for our home study. It was our joint interview. I guess we did ok.

March 26, 2010 Our formal application was approved by the Country Program Director.

April 19, 2010 We completed our individual interview for the home study. I went first at the Bethany office and then Duane had his interview. Our social workers then came over to the house for our home visit. It just so happened that it was our annual neighborhood clean up day, so everyone had all of their garbage piled in the street waiting for city pick up. The social workers didn't seem to mind, but seriously what are the odds of neighbor cleanup being the same day as the home visit. Ty and Ali both got out of school early to have their individual interviews here at the house. They were pretty happy about that.

May 1, 2010 We received our official, approved home study in the mail.

May 3, 2010 I sent our I600A application to the USCIS. This application is for the immigration of a child into our country. I also mailed off a copy of the home study to America's Christian Credit Union. They needed to home study before they would fund our adoption loan.

May 10, 2010 I sent all of our notarized paperwork to the Secretary of State to get the Great Seal of Wyoming. We have to have that paper attached to every notarized document to prove that the person who notarized our signatures is actually a notary in the state of Wyoming. I think that there we 35 documents.

May 12, 2010 We got all of the paperwork back from the Secretary of State.

May 13, 2010 We received a notice of action from the USCIS that they had received our I600A application and were processing it.

May 19, 2010 We have to get our biometric fingerprints at a field office for the Department of Homeland Security in order to complete the I600A. The notice of receipt we received from the USCIS They said that I could check the status of my case online, but I was never able to. I called the National Benefits Center phone number listed on the form. I told them that I was unable to check the status of my case online . The lady I was talking to said that was because for some reason you couldn't check the status of that form on line, but they didn't know why. I asked her to check to see if we had our fingerprinting scheduled yet. The closest field office is 2 hours away in Casper, WY. Here is what she told me, "the appointments are all full, so you are on a waiting list to get an appointment scheduled." WHAT, a waiting list to schedule an appointment? I asked her if I could call the field office, but was told that they didn't have a phone number. She gave me an email address to the field office which didn't work. I asked her if there was another field office we could go to. She said that I would have to go to the USCIS website and see if there was another office that we could make it to, then call her back. I did that and there is a field office in Rapid City, SD 2 hour and 15 minutes from us. I called her back, she had to talk to her manager to do a manual appointment location change and then they had to book appointments at least 2 week out so that they could get stuff to us in the mail. She said she would check on all of that and get back to me. She called me back about an hour later. We have our appointment two weeks from today at 8:00 in the morning. It seems like that was a fairly simple solution, but it sure took a lot of work to get there. Thanks for letting me vent. If I hadn't been a little pushy, who knows how long it would have taken for us to get moved off the waiting list to schedule an appointment. Crazy.